Contributors

Tuesday, 18 April 2017

3rd Virginia

The 3rd Virginia was raised in December 1775 as a Continental Army unit. It lost its initial colonels, Hugh Mercer and George Weedon, to promotion within a couple of months and was then commanded for by Thomas Marshall. William Heth then led the regiment from early 1778 until 1781. The regiment was engaged at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth. By 1780 it had been posted to South Carolina, and most of the regiment was captured when the British took Charleston in May of that year. Captain John Chilton left a number of letters and a diary of his time in the regiment, which were published a few years ago.

I painted two bases for this regiment in 2004. I then completely forgot about it until earlier this year, when I was deciding what to do with my remaining "firing line" figures; there's not much you can do with an 8-figure unit, so bringing it up to strength was an obvious use for my odds 'n sods. These are largely Foundry figures, with a couple of Perries and one Eureka ragged Continental. The uniform colours are from the Zlatich Osprey MAAs - light blue coats faced blue with green waistcoats. That sounds pretty outlandish, and I think it was initial scepticism about the colour scheme that led to my initial downing tools on this unit. So for most of the new figures I dropped the green waistcoats. So I don't really know how accurate this portrayal is; but it's colourful at least and other regiments certainly wore light blue coats (such as the 2nd New Hampshire). My painting style and the paints I use have changed since 2004 - the dark blues on the earlier figures, for example, were highlighted with a long-vanished Citadel colour, which is different to the Foundry "Deep Blue" triad that I use nowadays.